Sylvain Lévi (March 28, 1863 – October 30, 1935) was an orientalist and indologist.[1] Born in Paris on March 28, 1863, his book Théâtre Indien is an important work on the subject. Lévi also conducted some of the earliest analysis of Tokharian fragments discovered in Western China.

He was also an early opponent of the traditionalist author René Guénon, citing the latter's uncritical belief in a "Perennial philosophy", that is, a primal truth revealed directly to primitive humanity, based on an extreme reductionist view of Hinduism, which was the subject of Guénon's first book, L'Introduction générale a l'étude des doctrines hindoues, in fact a thesis delivered to Lévi at the Sorbonne, and rejected.